“What goes around comes around” is David Greenberg?s take on the $1 million donation his nonprofit recently received from a local couple.
“It?s amazing that here somebody didn?t want to give it to one of the larger organizations where $1 million would have been a drop in the bucket,” said Greenberg, president of the 88-year-old, publicly and privately funded League for People with Disabilities.
“A couple showed up at the league one day and toured the facility, and about a week later, I got a call from the Baltimore Community Foundation that this same couple wanted to make an anonymous donation,” Greenberg said. “It reaffirms what we?re all about here.”
The windfall will allow the $6 million-a-year, 60-employee organization to pay down debt incurred from a recent renovation of its 6,500-square-foot Cold Spring Lane facility, where most of its rehabilitative, fitness, vocational and therapeutic recreation services take place, Greenberg said.
A refuge for about 1,000 disabled people a year, the building boasts a half-Olympic-size, warm-water swimming pool and a health club that?s open to the disabled and nondisabled alike.
“When I first came here, I was in a wheelchair,” said Jimmy Young, a former Baltimore City police officer who was shot in the line of duty. “But with the help of exercise and their pool, they got me back on my feet.”
The league facility is also home to wellness and mainstreaming programs for the deaf, the blind and people with autism ? and their families ?and it serves as a base for league extension programs in the community.
“We have this amazing travel program,” Greenberg said. “We take people with disabilities on vacation … to Disney World or to Niagara Falls … and they will stay in hotels and enjoy themselves for a weekend or a week.”
During the summer, the ramped-up nonprofit also runs a camp ? called Camp Greentop ? for clients and caretakers attracted to a nature experience.
“We want people with disabilities to have as good a life as possible,” Greenberg said. “So we try to expose them to life?s choices and activities that people without disabilities have ? so they can enjoy themselves, so they can get a job.”
“I just think it?s a wonderful organization,” said Phil Wetzler, a league volunteer and swimming coach to clients and Special Olympics athletes. “Everybody gets treated with a smile, and the dedication is excellent, in my experience.”
